


Rocky Road

by LemuelCork



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemuelCork/pseuds/LemuelCork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is not a fairy tale, is it?"  </p>
<p>A month after Christmas in July comes...a surprise in August.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rocky Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallearthcat (vamplover82)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamplover82/gifts).



So you’re really a duke?

     Tiny finger jabbing into his forearm.

     My _name_ is…never mind. He wipes up the spill of Rocky Road defacing his bar, slings the rag back under the counter.

     Can I have another?

     No.

     _Please?_

That’s your third, kid. Don’t push your luck.

     Mister Whirr-Nose said you’d give me all the ice cream I want.

     Mister Whirr-Nose needs to stop saying things like that.

     He’s funny. I like him.

     Uh-huh.

     Spoon clatters on counter, leaving another slime trail of milky goodness. Fuck it. Worse things have been spilled here. Lots worse.

     He’s handsome, comes the piping little voice. Sing-song. Don’t you think he’s handsome?

     What? Who?

     Mister Whirr-Nose…

     Duke flips up the top of the freezer chest. Have some more ice cream, kid.

     Footsteps on gravel outside, door cracks open. It’s Mr. Whirr-Nose himself, peeling off his heavy gloves, glimmers of snow on shoulders and shoes.

     Hiiii, sings the little voice as its owner rotates on the stool.

     Nothing, says Nathan, pocketing the gloves. No sign of Hadley or her father. Honey, he says, dropping to a crouch beside the stool so he’s at eye level. Are you _sure_ you don’t know where they are?

     Nuh-uh.

     And you still can’t tell us who dropped you off?

     Santa did.

     Honey… But Nathan’s got nothing left. His hands hover in the air for a second before dropping to his thighs. He stands, exchanges a worried look with Duke. The girl’s been telling the same story since they found her on the highway outside the Gull: Santa dropped her off. In his sleigh. Then flew away, reindeer and all.

     And now it’s started to snow.

     In August.

     Not that it’s the first time that has ever happened in Haven, Maine. Hell, just last month Hadley Chambers made it snow inside a movie theater, which is even more freakish if you think about it. And when asked her name, this pint-sized charmer with the pixie cut and the candy-cane tights said Carol Ray Chambers – daughter of the brother of the father of. Which is why Nathan went out looking for Hadley and her dad. But their home is locked up tight, lights out, _Haven Herald_ untouched on the porch. So.

     Can I have another scoop, please?

     Big eyes, eyelashes batting.

     Where Audrey is in all this: nowhere. That’s right. Snow in August, job for Parker if there ever was one, and she’s taken a powder. Not the sort dusting Nathan’s clothes, either.

     Duke is taking care of keeping the pixie happy. God knows what’ll come down from the sky if she’s not. But that can only go on so long. It’s a small freezer chest and they’re coming to the end of the (rocky) road.

     Carol, Duke says, looking earnestly and intensely into her eyes, trying for a connection, or as much of one as you can have with a, what, nine year old? He says: You want to help us, right? You want to help us find your family for you, get you home…?

     I’m happy here with the two of you, she says.

     You can’t stay here forever, Duke makes the mistake of saying.

     Mistake because the little girl’s face clouds over, and suddenly it’s snowing like nothing they’ve ever seen. Not a flurry, not a blizzard: out of a blue August sky a blanket of snow plummets down, feet of snow falling in seconds, like someone turned over a giant shovel full of the stuff and dumped it on them. The windows are covered. The door, when Nathan goes to push it, doesn’t budge.

     He looks back at the bar, at Duke, at Carol. She’s scraping the bottom of her bowl.

     May I pleasehave another…?

 

#

    

No reception, Nathan says, which is a surprise to neither of them since it isn’t the first time he’s made the attempt. No luck hailing Laverne at headquarters or Dwight on his cell. Duke has dug out the blankets from his kit of emergency supplies and Carol is bundled under two of them. Which leaves one for the two of them and they’re both being manly about it.

     You take it, I can’t feel the cold anyway. This is Nathan’s refrain.

     You couldn’t feel it if I set your hair on fire, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt you.

     Why don’t you two share, asks the bundled-up pixie, and Nathan goes to the door again, tries his phone again.

     Duke, meanwhile, is reasoning with Carol or attempting to. She’s having none of it. No, she didn’t make it snow. That’s silly. Little girls don’t make it snow! Not outside of fairy tales, anyway, and this is not a fairy tale, is it?

     In any event, it’s clear she doesn’t know how to undo it, and curse-whispering has never been Duke’s strong suit. Calling Audrey Parker…  Except that calling anyone isn’t on the menu right now.

     Of course they won’t be trapped here forever: the snow has stopped drumming on the roof, the August sun is out; eventually it’ll melt enough for them to get free. Assuming Jack Frost here doesn’t give them another deluge. Duke tucks her in snugly by the jukebox and encourages her to go to sleep. Fat chance, he thinks, with all that sugar flowing through her little body, but even as he thinks this to himself she’s out like the proverbial light. Duke turns out the actual lights, too. With the windows blocked, the place is practically pitch black, just the rainbow neon of the juke and the handful of lighted beer signs in the windows for illumination. And the tiny glowing screen of Nathan’s cell, but then that goes out too.

     Footsteps.  Nathan lowers himself to the floor beside Duke, who wordlessly puts half the blanket over the man’s shoulders. Just because.

     They’re down behind the bar, near the freezer chest, on top of which rests the now truly finished tub of Rocky Road. Which Duke pulls over and scrapes around in some more. Just because.

     You can’t possibly want ice cream now, Nathan whispers.

     Duke shrugs. Last spoonful. Want some?

     He waves the spoon an inch away from Nathan’s nose. His Whirr-Nose.

     Duke grins. You know something, I just realized I don’t know if you could even taste it. I mean, I know you can’t _feel_ it, like cold or hot or wet…but…

     Yes. I can taste it.

     Like sweet or salty…

     I can smell it, I can taste it. Just can’t feel it.

     Duke pops the spoon in his mouth. Oh wait, he says around the spoon. Did you want…?

     That’s okay.

     Their heads are close, the better to whisper without waking Little Sally Snowstarter. Maybe that’s why Duke thinks to stick his tongue out, the last spoonful melting but still unswallowed. Like a challenge. _You say you can taste? Taste this._

     But does he really think Nathan will?

     He does not.

     Nathan doesn’t think so either; if you’d asked him, he’d have said no, never, not in a million years. But here he is doing it, and it’s like they were fourteen again, and on Duke’s fucking reclaimed rowboat, out on the water with no one around and the sweet melt of an orange creamsicle shared between them. On a dare. On a lark. Duke the contrarian, the bad boy, the tempter. Little goatee he was already desperately trying to grow out, and long hair, and Nathan the sheriff’s son, and oh my god it was good tasting it off Duke’s tongue out under the blazing sun where no one could see and no one could tell. Just the one time. Never spoken of, never repeated. In fact, they grew apart after, and both boys’ discomfort with what they’d done probably had a lot to do with that. When Duke got arrested for the first time later that summer, Nathan had thought: good. Good.

     But now here they are, and it’s Rocky Road, and Nathan can’t feel the other man’s tongue in his mouth, can barely see an inch in front of his face, but he can taste, and the taste is sweet.

 

#

 

Morning, and the sound of a motor outside, a snowblower making the slightest of inroads; the sound is muted and it doesn’t wake them. Nor does the _chuck-chuck-chuck_ of a shovel biting deep into the snow, nor the door finally opening some twenty minutes later. It takes the press of Audrey’s boot against the side of Duke’s leg to rouse them, huddled together under the blanket.

     What happened here? she asks.

     Where were you? is Duke’s reply.

     Nathan’s up and hunting around the Gull. Carol is nowhere in sight.

     How could she have gotten out? Parker, did you see a girl go past…?

     A girl?

     Eight or nine years old, about so tall – he holds up a palm – short black hair, striped leggings.

     A girl? No. Dwight and I spent all morning digging you out, and there was definitely no girl.

     Huh, Duke says. And Nathan asks, So where did the snow come from, then?

     That I think I can answer, Audrey says, and she tells them how she spent the day helping Gordon Chambers. Hadley had an…episode. They got some bad news about her cousin in Derry, and it set her off. They brought her to the Freddy, got her on medication, stayed with her…but by the time they got her stabilized the snow had already begun to fall.

     The cousin a nine-year-old girl? Nathan asks.

     She’s a girl, Audrey says, don’t know how old… Then she looks down, spots something, and makes the universal gesture for zipping a fly, which Nathan makes the universal mistake of thinking couldn’t be meant for him. But it is, and he zips up, blushing.

     Hearing a second zipper go up behind her, Audrey turns. Duke’s wandering toward the juke, not looking their way.

     Audrey raises an eyebrow. Just the one, cocks it at Nathan, whose pan is as dead as dead pans get.

     Anything you want to share with me?

     Nah. Nathan shrugs.

     Duke…?

     Duke turns, a half-grin on his face. He erases it quick under Audrey’s scrutiny.

     Think I’m gonna go make some waffles, he says. Glances Nathan’s way, then back.

     A la mode, he says.  

 


End file.
